Friday, November 30, 2012

Two Pakistan-born brothers living in Florida have been arrested on charges of providing support to terrorists and conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction within the United States, authorities said on Friday.

The men were charged in a grand jury indictment announced by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida. Federal prosecutors allege the men, both U.S. citizens, provided money, housing, communications equipment and transportation as part of a conspiracy.

A statement from prosecutors said the brothers’ alleged goal was “to use a weapon of mass destruction (explosives) against persons and property within the United States“. It did not elaborate and U.S. officials declined to go into details but said the arrests were not the result of a sting operation.

... “Any potential threat posed by these two individuals has been disrupted,” U.S. Attorney Wifredo Ferrer said in a statement.

The accused were identified as Raees Alam Qazi, 20, and Sheheryar Alam Qazi, 30. They were arrested on Thursday in Fort Lauderdale and made an initial appearance in federal court on Friday.

This thought just popped into my head: the word irony can be defined as "The New York Times building being leveled by a WMD originally manufactured in Iraq under Saddam Hussein."

Editor’s Note: David Green is the founder and CEO of Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., which is challenging the Obamacare contraceptive mandate. This letter is an excellent illustration of how unconstitutional, authoritarian, and centralized federal policies crush individual liberties. It is but one illustration of the amoral collectivism which is the hallmark of a nascent tyranny.

When my family and I started our company 40 years ago, we were working out of a garage on a $600 bank loan, assembling miniature picture frames. Our first retail store wasn’t much bigger than most people’s living rooms, but we had faith that we would succeed if we lived and worked according to God’s word. From there,Hobby Lobby has become one of the nation’s largest arts and crafts retailers, with more than 500 locations in 41 states. Our children grew up into fine business leaders, and today we run Hobby Lobby together, as a family.

We’re Christians, and we run our business on Christian principles. I’ve always said that the first two goals of our business are (1) to run our business in harmony with God’s laws, and (2) to focus on people more than money. And that’s what we’ve tried to do. We close early so our employees can see their families at night. We keep our stores closed on Sundays, one of the week’s biggest shopping days, so that our workers and their families can enjoy a day of rest. We believe that it is by God’s grace that Hobby Lobby has endured, and he has blessed us and our employees. We’ve not only added jobs in a weak economy, we’ve raised wages for the past four years in a row. Our full-time employees start at 80% above minimum wage.

But now, our government threatens to change all of that. A new government health care mandate says that our family business MUST provide what I believe are abortion-causing drugs as part of our health insurance. Being Christians, we don’t pay for drugs that might cause abortions, which means that we don’t cover emergency contraception, the morning-after pill or the week-after pill. We believe doing so might end a life after the moment of conception, something that is contrary to our most important beliefs. It goes against the Biblical principles on which we have run this company since day one. If we refuse to comply, we could face $1.3 million PER DAY in government fines.

Our government threatens to fine job creators in a bad economy. Our government threatens to fine a company that’s raised wages four years running. Our government threatens to fine a family for running its business according to its beliefs. It’s not right. I know people will say we ought to follow the rules; that it’s the same for everybody. But that’s not true. The government has exempted thousands of companies from this mandate, for reasons of convenience or cost. But it won’t exempt them for reasons of religious belief.

So, Hobby Lobby – and my family – are forced to make a choice. With great reluctance, we filed a lawsuit today, represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, asking a federal court to stop this mandate before it hurts our business. We don’t like to go running into court, but we no longer have a choice. We believe people are more important than the bottom line and that honoring God is more important than turning a profit.

My family has lived the American dream. We want to continue growing our company and providing great jobs for thousands of employees, but the government is going to make that much more difficult. The government is forcing us to choose between following our faith and following the law. I say that’s a choice no American – and no American business – should have to make.

The government cannot force you to follow laws that go against your fundamental religious belief. They have exempted thousands of companies but will not except Christian organizations including the Catholic church.

Since you will not see this covered in any of the liberal media, pass this on to all your contacts.

...On Wednesday, President Obama said he “couldn’t be prouder” of the “extraordinary” UN Amb. Susan Rice. Really? Heckuva job, Susan...

...Yep, that sea of green and black was Rice’s followup to her role in misleading Americans on the nature of the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. Only eight nations joined the United States in voting “no” on granting Palestine nonmember observer status at the United Nations. Only eight. And instead of being fired, she may be up for a promotion to Secretary of State...

[These maps,] created by Princeton Professor Robert Vanderbei, takes a slightly different approach. It’s one of the few that shows the action in three dimensions.

Like some other maps we’ve seen, Vanderbei’s displays votes county by county, eschewing solid reds and blues for a palette of purples, graded according to how each county voted. But what makes Vanderbei’s visualization unique is his use of the z-axis to show how many people voted in these counties. In metropolitan areas, columns shoot up like neon skyscrapers; in flyover country, it’s typically more of a low-rise affair. But the effect is powerful: At a glance, Vanderbei’s map shows not just how the country voted, but where it voted, too...

And that means cities. The democratic lean of places like New York City, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Boston shouldn’t be news to anyone, but seeing the results like this gives you a sense of just how overwhelming the number of voters really is in those densely populated urban centers. And so long as those towers stay blue, it’s why you won’t hear about states like California or New York being in play anytime soon.

Vanderbei, a professor of operations research and financial engineering, made his first "Purple Area" visualization after the 2000 election. He had been reading USA Today when one of the typical "county-by-county, red-blue" graphics caught his eye. That map, he says, "made me wonder why anyone would paint a county-by-county map in such a way as to imply that a county has cast its vote for one candidate or the other. I live in a county that went about 52% republican and 48% democratic in that election. Painting the county red seemed highly misleading..."

... my biggest takeaway was that the Obama campaign’s ground game in Colorado must’ve really worked. Denver’s the country’s 23rd most populous city--smaller in population than Houston, Dallas, El Paso, and Fort Worth to the south in Texas--but its impressively tall (and solidly blue) stack represents a key source of votes in what was a hotly contested state.

QOTD: "At this moment, Republicans in Congress need to examine which presents a more dire threat to the country:
A) A double-dip recession driven by the sequester and the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, or

B) the public’s belief (verified through polling) that our giant debt, our ticking time bomb of entitlements, and our gargantuan government can be solved by “asking the richest Americans to pay a little bit more,” as Obama insists.

Option A is terrible, but Option B is the giant locked door blocking all of the real solutions.

So if we must have tax hikes, let the tax cuts for every income level expire and let everyone of every income level pay higher taxes. Destroy the illusion among so many voters that they can get all the government they want without paying more in taxes." --Jim Geraghty

Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) says, “corporations control the patterns of thinking” in the United States and that the Bill of Rights to the Constitution should be amended so that the government is given the power to restrict freedom of speech.

"We need a constitutional amendment to allow the legislature to control the so-called free speech rights of corporations," said Johnson... “They control the patterns of thinking ... They control the media. They control the messages that you get. So, you are being taught to hate your government--don’t want government, but keep your hands off of my Medicare by the way. I mean, we are all confused people and we’re poking fingers at each other saying, well you’re black, you’re Hispanic, immigration, homosexuals. You know, we’re lost on the social issues, abortion, contraception.

“And these folks," Johnson said, "are setting up a scenario where they’re privatizing every aspect of our lives as we know it. So, wake up! Wake up! Let’s look at what’s happening. We need a constitutional amendment to allow the legislature to control the so-called free speech rights of corporations.”

The modern Left is as far from classical liberalism as one could imagine.

These men are Statists: interested only in centralizing ever more power and in consolidating that power with fewer and fewer masterminds in Washington. These are the kind of men that our country's founders despised and feared.

They are would-be despots who worship unlimited government, who respect neither checks nor balances, and blatantly violate the Constitution at every opportunity.

I wonder what America's breaking point will be? By that I mean, when will have the circle of liberty constricted around the average American's throat sufficiently to waken the sleeping giant?

It’s not just a bad deal, this is really an insulting deal… Robert E. Lee was offered easier terms at Appomattox and he lost the Civil War. The Democrats won by 3% of the vote and they did not hold the House. Republicans won the House. So this is not exactly unconditional surrender, but that’s what the administration is asking of Republicans.

There not only are no cuts in this, there’s an increase in new spending with a stimulus – this is almost unheard of. I mean, what do they expect? They obviously expect the Republicans will cave on everything. I think Republican ought to simply walk away. The president is the president, he’s the leader.

They are demanding that Republicans explain all the cuts that they want to make. We had that movie a year and a half ago where Paul Ryan presented a budget, a serious real budget with real cuts. Obama was supposed to give a speech in which he would respond with a counter offer and what did he do? He gave a speech where he had Ryan sitting in the front row, he called the Ryan proposal un-American and insulted him, offered nothing and ran on Mediscare in the next 18 months. And they expect Republicans are going to do this again?

The Republicans are going to walk on this and I think they have leverage. Yes, for congressional Democrats it will help them in the future if Republicans absorb the blame because we’re going to have a recession. But Obama’s not running again unlike the congressional Democrats. He’s going to have a recession, 9% unemployment, 2 million more unemployed, and a second term that’s going to be a ruin. That is not a good proposition if you’re Barack Obama.

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich said Wednesday that House Republicans should stop negotiating with President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats on the fiscal cliff, saying that by doing so, they give Obama all of the leverage in the talks.

“One of the things I would say to House Republicans is to get a grip,” Gingrich said in a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif.

“They are the majority. They’re not the minority,” he said, enunciating the words as if explaining the concept to someone who did not understand it. “They don’t need to cave in to Obama; they don’t need to form a ‘Surrender Caucus.’”

...He also addressed the recent focus on Grover Norquist and his no-raising taxes pledge, which some Republicans have abandoned in recent weeks, calling it a “distraction.”

“I give Obama great credit for this. I have never seen anybody better at finding trivial distractions in order to avoid responsibility,” Gingrich said.

Part of Obama's transformation of America is wiping out the Republican Party. And anyone who fails to understand that that is also part of Obama's agenda at this moment, anybody who fails to understand that is really not paying attention and is too caught up in traditional conventional wisdom about, "Well, it was just another election. Well, yes, Obama won. Yes, we marshaled our forces, but we need to stand for pro-growth policies and all that rotgut." Yes, we do. There's no way we're ever gonna be tied to pro-growth policies if our fingerprints are on this coming disaster...

... The best thing to do is back out of this and let Obama and the Democrats have it and do what they gotta do. 'Cause that's gonna happen anyway. I don't know about you, but I don't want my fingerprints on this.

Obama has yet to make any serious offer -- a "balanced" offer, using his terminology -- and Republicans need to just walk away. Obama created the fiscal cliff; he created sequestration; he made his bed. Let him lie in it.

Designing a car is about so much more than designing a car. Not so long ago, Ford’s J Mays told me that he’d urge his designers to talk about anything but cars--movies, music, and travel--to keep them inspired.

WIth that in mind, it makes a lot of sense that Hyundai tapped Universal Everything, a studio known for creating stunning animations for Coldplay and big commercial brands, to create 18 inspiring animations to be played on Hyundai’s campus outside Seoul. These weren’t advertisements to be played at trade shows but internally focused media, to generate new ideas from within.

“Our outside perspective of the company forms fresh ways of looking at their processes, leading to a series of abstract films, with only subtle hints of automotive and construction details,” Universal Everything’s Matt Pyke tells me. “The abstract, logo-less approach was taken to ensure every viewer found their own interpretations.”

The collection of “video sculptures” is an incredibly diverse play on several tactile materials. It ranges from riffing on the human figure in motion (with bright lights and color)--which is a bit of a Universal Everything trademark at this point--to intense liquid particle effects, to a choir of plasticky geometric aliens, to, yes, even a car being carved from a solid block by wind...

I wonder if Hyundai would consider adopting a conservative blogger and installing similar hardware in his home to inspire him.

A search at the Associated Press’s national website on Warren Buffett’s last name at about 5 p.m. ET returned two recent items which are still present there. Each item (here and here) mentions the Obama Fan of Omaha’s idea to “impose a minimum tax of 30 percent on income between $1 million and $10 million, and a 35 percent rate for income above that.” Neither mentions the pathetically small amount such a tax would raise while seriously impacting the ability of high income earners who own or run businesses to expand them — or in some cases causing them to shrink.

It’s the same at other establishment press outlets. Two recent New York Times items found in a search on Buffett’s full name (here and here, the latter item being Buffett’s own op-ed on Sunday) fail to note how little money Buffett’s proposed tax hikes would raise. So how little is “little”?

Buffett hasn’t been entirely consistent in his expressed suggestion. Earlier this year, he wanted a rate of 30%, while his recent Times op-ed suggests 35% for those earning over $10 million. James Pethokoukis estimated in April that the amount which would be raised would be about $5 billion — “although experience suggests that it won’t raise even that much.” The government currently spends $5 billion about every 12 hours, and runs an $5 billion deficit in less than two days.

You read that right: even if the truly wealthy didn't find ways to get their money out of the U.S. or otherwise evade these taxes, the amount raised by Buffett's brilliant plan wouldn't pay for two days of this massive, bloated federal government's deficit spending.

It also turns out that Buffett is hardly a model citizen when it comes to paying his own taxes:

Lately, Warren has been a shill for Obama. Over and over again, we hear how good ole Warren “wants” to pay more taxes and thinks his wealthy buddies ought to follow suit. “We aren’t taxed enough,” he says. Well, let’s take a closer look at just where Warren stands when it really comes down to paying his taxes...

There are two recent cases where Warren has done everything possible to AVOID paying taxes that he actually owes. The first case involved a 14-year fight over the dividend-received deduction that was finally settled with the IRS in 2005. The second case is still pending after 10 years in which he owes just over $1 BILLION in back taxes. Both of these cases are well-documented and you can satisfy yourself simply by using Google to inquire as to the voracity of these assertions. Also note the timeframes of 14-years and 10+-years; not exactly a haphazard hissy fit. While you’re at it, you might also ask yourself “why” Warren says one thing in public discourse while he practices the exact opposite in his business and personal life. Is not that the definition of hypocrite?

...Buffett is now at the center of another tax controversy, according to The Wall Street Journal. His recent decision to invest in Bank of America “represents another tax-avoidance triumph for the Berkshire chief executive,” the Journal wrote in an editorial ... “With the exclusion for Mr. Buffett and his fellow shareholders, Berkshire will enjoy an effective tax rate of 14.175% on the $300 million in dividends it will receive each year from Bank of America,” the Journal reported. [Remember, his secretary pays a higher tax rate?].

Look up "crony capitalist" in the dictionary and I'll bet you see a lithograph of Warren Buffett staring back at you.

QOTD: "Next week, the United Nations’ attempt to take over the Internet will kick into high gear when the International Telecommunications Union meets in Dubai with representatives from 193 countries to craft a new governing structure for the Internet. The meetings are expected to last two weeks.

If you haven’t heard about this issue, there’s a reason. The negotiators have kept the tightest possible lid on their discussions to prevent word of the regulatory proposals from leaking out...

...But the first reports are horrific. Vinton Cerf, one of the founders of the Web and currently a vice-president of Google, warns, “The open Internet has never been at higher risk than it is now.” He adds, “If all of us do not pay attention to what’s going on, users worldwide will be at risk of losing the open and free Internet.”

The very concept of U.N. control of the Web is horrible. The U.N. is corrupt and biased in favor of authoritarian regimes. But this particular regulatory proposal is even worse. It takes the leading force for democracy in the world today — the Internet — and could transform it into an instrument for propaganda and oppression..." --Dick Morris

I repeat: you should be sitting down before viewing the following graph.

While the general idea of dividing your portfolio between long-term and speculative capital (the latter is only the money you can afford to lose) is not a particularly new one, the inclusion of the insurance part in the portfolio may make it more robust to financial blow-ups. We will now focus on that - gold and silver as insurance against severe financial turmoil.

Gold may be perceived as insurance if you believe that, because of psychological reasons, it appeals to investors as a wealth-preservation vehicle. In case of financial turmoil they turn to precious metals, the increased demand causes an increase in the price and gold and silver deliver on their promise to provide an alternative to government bonds.

There is also another dimension to it: in the past gold and silver were used as money. As a matter of fact, gold had been indirectly used as money up to 1971 when U.S. president Richard Nixon officially announced that the U.S. government would cease to adhere to its promise to redeem the greenback in gold. Since that moment money has been only paper and a promise of the government to accept payments in it...

Some investors fear that excessive deficits as seen in the U.S. will result in money being printed on a large scale (which actually is already the case: open-ended QE) or even in the implosion of the dollar. The bigger the deficits, the more likely such a scenario seems. This is shown on the chart below.

...since 2000 increases in the U.S. debt have been accompanied by increases in the price of gold. This might reflect investors' fear that the U.S. government will eventually default and their belief that gold may be a safe haven in case of such a development.

The abovementioned points may lead to the conclusion that gold may in fact skyrocket if things get out of hand in the U.S. or in the European Union. The main problem here is that nobody knows when (if at all) the paper currencies will begin to visibly deteriorate or disappear completely. Precisely because of that, we suggest holding on to gold and silver at all times with a part of your portfolio.

We call this part of your portfolio "Insurance," because by holding on to gold and silver even during corrections you accept small losses in hope of enormous gains should serious economic turmoil materialize. Economic crises have the inherent quality of catching most investors off-guard. We don't want you to be among them.

Through VetNet, these founding partners offer a full spectrum of employment resources for members of the community. Whether starting a job search from scratch, looking for mentors in a specific industry or starting a business, transitioning service members, veterans and military spouses will be able to connect with career services, job opportunities and each other.

All of the content and resources are organized into three tracks by objective, each hosted on its own Google+ page.

Career Connections Track (google.com/+VetNetCareer): Walmart, GE and Capital One are just a few of the companies that are participating in VetNet to help veterans and military spouses find civilian careers. Check out today’s Vets In Finance panel at 2pm EST.

Well, Democrats say they want a tax hike on "the rich" (actually, the "rich" include any sole proprietor or small business that grosses -- not nets -- as little as $200,000 a year).

That "10-for-one" deal would trade an $85 billion tax hike on America's top two percent for $850 billion in spending cuts. Coincidentally, that's the size of the so-called "one-time, emergency Stimulus" that gets spent each and every year as part of the baseline budget.

Hey, Republicans: could you ask the Democrats where the list of spending cuts are that meet their vaunted 10-for-one deal? That would take the $850 billion Stimulus out of each year's insane levels of borrowing and deficit spending?

Hey, Republicans: can you ask President Obama and the Democrats where their list of spending cuts is? Because I haven't seen one.

QOTD: "What Reid is trying to do is wrong, yet the only way for conservatives to fight back is to engage the fight. If Reid is going to push the theory that until the Senate operates under the rules, there are no rules, then he has provided an unprecedented opportunity for conservatives to push some real Senate rules reform ideas. If there are no rules, then Reid can’t stop conservatives from offering a never-ending stream of rules change ideas for the Senate to cast votes on..." --Brian Darling

So if Reid wants to go nuclear on the filibuster and illegally shred decades of Senate procedure, a response in the form of some serious scoundrelry is in order.

• A new two-thirds point of order against any infringement on the Second Amendment rights of all Americans. This would be subject to a simple majority vote under Reid’s theory. There is a pro-gun majority in the Senate today, and this might actually pass. It would be a great tool for conservatives to forever block reinstatement of the assault weapons ban in addition to any other gun-grabbing ideas.

• A new two-thirds point of order against any net tax increase on the American people as scored by the Congressional Budget Office. This would be subject to a simple majority vote and is part of the Senate version of the Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution supported by all members of the current Republican caucus.

• A new point of order preventing the Senate Majority Leader from blocking amendments by filling up all the areas of the amendment tree with pro-forma amendments. Reid has used this tactic to prevent members from offering amendments. A new point of order should be proposed to prevent that tactic for Reid or any future Majority Leader.

• A new point of order to make Senators sign a consent form before a bill is passed by “Unanimous Consent” or “UC.” Many times, the Senate operates by waiving the rules with the consent of all Senators. Many times the bills passed are opposed by members, but they fear getting blamed for obstructing bills by forcing the Senate to abide by all the rules to pass a bill or confirm a nomination. This would put all members explicitly on the record supporting legislation that sneaks through the Senate under the radar.

As Heritage notes, these are just a few of the ideas that could be floated. Off the top of my head, I can think of a few others:

• Preventing any bill related to education from infringing on charter schools and privatized education

• Capping any funding bill from exceeding 18 percent of GDP in toto

• Forcing any bill that funds Obamacare, the HHS or the EPA to face a six week public review period before a vote is permitted

You may remember a vulnerability in four million keycard locks presented at the Black Hat conference in July. Hacker Cody Brocious showed he could insert a device he built for less than $50 into the port at the bottom of the common hotel lock, read a key out of its memory, and open it in seconds...

...Two months later, it turns out at least one burglar was already making use of that technique to rob a series of hotel rooms in Texas. The Hyatt House Galleria in Houston has revealed that in at least three September cases of theft from its rooms, the thief used that Onity vulnerability to effortlessly open rooms and steal valuables like laptops...

...at least two other hotels in Texas were hit with the attack. Onity has been criticized for its less-than-stellar response to a glaring vulnerability in its devices. The Hyatt says Onity didn't provide a fix until after its break-ins, forcing the hotel to plug its locks' ports with epoxy. And even now, Onity is asking its hotel customers to pay for the full fix, which involves replacing the locks' circuit boards.

The hack in its entirety is detailed on Brocious’s website, but in short: At the base of every Onity lock is a small barrel-type DC power socket (just like on your old-school Nokia phone). This socket is used to charge up the lock’s battery, and to program the lock with a the hotel’s “sitecode” — a 32-bit key that identifies the hotel. By plugging an Arduino microcontroller into the DC socket, Brocious found that he could simply read this 32-bit key out of the lock’s memory. No authentication is required — and the key is stored in the same memory location on every Onity lock... The best bit: By playing this 32-bit code back to the lock… it opens. According to Brocious, it takes just 200 milliseconds to read the sitecode and open the lock.

As for how Onity justifies such a stupendously disgusting lack of security, who knows. Generally, as far as managerial types go, securing a system seems like a frivolous expense — until someone hacks you. In non-high-tech circles, hacks like this are par for the course — usually, a company doesn’t hire a security specialist until after its first high-profile hack. For a company that is tasked with securing millions of humans every night, though, it would’ve been nice if Onity had shown slightly more foresight.

My advice: bar the hotel room door and secure it with a chair against the door jamb. Oh, and don't leave valuables in the room safe either. That's easily hacked too.

(Just wondering: isn't it about time security hardware companies started taking security more seriously?)

The main problem--and where most of the other problems begin--according to Schiff, is the Fed's manipulation of interest rates. By interfering with the free market value of money, and making it cheaper than the market would dictate, the Fed encourages financial bubbles that then necessarily pop. When a bubble pops, the market needs to correct itself; however, over the past 20 years, the Fed has not really allowed this correction to take place, as every time a bubble pops the Fed has lowered the interest rate even further, causing more money to enter the system and a new bubble to form. First it was dot-com stocks, then it was housing, and now it is government spending.

As a matter of fact, while government spending has reached new and mind-boggling heights in the recent past, it has actually been ballooning in this direction for years, spurred on largely by the low-interest rates that the Fed has provided. The government has used this borrowed money to maintain and extend social programs (such as Social Security and Medicare), and, more recently, bailout packages for failing businesses and entire industries. All the while, the government has been going deeper and deeper into debt. A big part of what has allowed the American government to borrow as much as it has (and to keep on borrowing now) is the fact that the American dollar is the world's reserve currency, which means it is always in demand, and hence people and organizations have been willing to act as creditors in order to get it. For Schiff, though, the sheer size of the debt, and the fact that it is running away faster and faster everyday (and has no realistic chance of ever being repaid) will sooner or later turn investors away from considering the American dollar a valuable reserve--at which point it will lose its status as the world's reserve, and investors will stop investing in it.

At this point, the American government will have but two options. It can either declare bankruptcy, or it can print the money it needs to pay its debt. In either case, an enormous crash will result, for in the first case, an astronomical sum of money that the economy had assumed existed will suddenly be wiped away, and in the latter case hyperinflation will set in, and the American dollar will be whittled down to worthless.

...the country will be forced to start over. For Schiff, this may not be such a bad thing, for, according to him, the nation has simply put itself in an unsustainable position, and the sooner it starts over the better. At that time, Schiff argues, America can finally get back to the small government and free-market forces that the country's founding fathers designed the nation around. While much of the book is focused on how the country can do this now, before the crash hits (in such areas as banking & finance, taxation, healthcare, education, the military, et. al.), Schiff very much believes that nothing can actually prevent the crash from coming, and that therefore, most of the rebuilding will have to be done after The Real Crash.

QOTD: [Come January, more than two-thirds of the states will be under single-party control,] "an interesting phenomenon to watch during the next four years of a continued Obama economy. As the choices made by individual states become more starkly partisan and the results start rolling in, we’re going to be able to compare apples to apples — and I’d bet good money that red states are going to start seeing significant gains in areas over which they have control.

For instance, California has a massive debt crisis on hand, and is sitting atop oil and gas reserves four times as large as those available in the Bakken Formation in North Dakota. Although California could sorely use the revenue and jobs that tapping into those resources more would create, they’re obstinately committed to developing an economy more focused on renewables. North Dakota, meanwhile, is taking full advantage of their energy resources, and their economy is going gangbusters with an unemployment rate hovering around three percent.

Implementing ObamaCare, education policy, regulatory agendas, taxes, energy development — there are plenty of policy decisions on which the parties will be able to make their specific mark, and the contrasts between good policies and bad policies are going to be much more readily apparent." --Erika Johnsen